I Can't
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: His breath fogs the interior of the Impala, the chill seeping into his bones, even through the leather jacket, his heart a lump of ice in his chest.


_**I Can't**_

**By****PhoenixDragonDreamer**

**A/N: **Though it has been thoroughly Kripke'd - I felt maybe it needed to be done. This was the one I was really nervous about, so...be gentle?

**Warnings: **Gen,Dark!Fic, Angst, R, Spoilers for 5.14-5.16, set between 5.16 and 5.17, other eps mentioned.

**Wordcount: **2877

**Summary: **_His breath fogs the interior of the Impala, the chill seeping into his bones, even through the leather jacket, his heart a lump of ice in his chest._

**Disclaimer: **Sadly (for me) I do not own them - they are owned by Cw, Kripke and Co. I just (unfortunately for THEM) like to play with them occasionally. I promise I will put them back in the same condition I found them in (which wasn't all that great to begin with *grins*). Not making any money - just having an awesome time!

* * *

His breath fogs the interior of the Impala, the chill seeping into his bones, even through the leather jacket, his heart a lump of ice in his chest. It wasn't even that cold outside - but it was cold within. He wondered how long it had been that way.

He heard the rustle-whir of delicate, tatter wings before he felt the stir of air on his face and he wondered if light really was faster than sound - and just how many universes danced delicately on the silvery lie that was Heaven. There was only one good thing to come out of Heaven - and somehow, some way - he had lost that, too.

He wondered if blood tasted thicker, sweeter in the cold.

Maybe Sam would know.

"Dean." Simple, flat, honest and heartbreaking. He could always do that - say his name as if it were a spell, but like it was in a foreign tongue.

Then again, for him, it probably was.

It was thick. He hadn't tasted it - it had been a few weeks since he had tasted anything other than whiskey, bile, ashes and regret, but he was sure it would taste sweeter in the cold.

Sam would know.

He had already thought that, hadn't he?

"Dean -"

"I thought...I thought you were gone." A sigh. That's all he could manage nowadays. Sam's hurt by the betrayal he had wreaked against him was like drowning. _He_ was drowning and there was no way to stop it.

Well...there was _one_ way. He just was too much of a coward to do it.

Well, too much of a coward for the next hour anyway.

A Winchester could do a lot of things in an hour.

Like destroy everything around him without saying a word.

Sam was bleeding inside the motel room. Those wounds would probably never heal - heart wounds rarely do.

He was an expert on that one.

"I was...I am." Was the flat reply.

Dean remembered - when he came back the first time. It was like being in Hell all over again. He was so alien, so icy, back to square one -

'_And_ _I certainly do not serve_ you_..._ '

_I never asked you to._

"I know..." He sliced across his palm again, recreating the mark the black dog had left on his hand in...what year was it? '98? '99?

At one point in time he would have known. Then again - once - he knew a lot of things. Or, he thought he did, anyway.

Now he just knew the taste of his own failure. His own betrayals. His own regret. It was a familiar taste. Comforting, almost - like blood. Like pain. Pain had its own taste, its own bite - whiskey was close, but never oh-so-real enough.

He shivered against the cold and meted out his own punishment for his body's display of weakness.

He bit his lip and tried again, wondered if Sam was worried about him - then he wondered why Sam would care.

Blood welled sluggishly across his lifeline and he found himself staring at it, fascinated.

Michael would probably be pissed if he scarred up his lovely vessel.

With that thought he cut another vicious line, higher up up this time, from the line that separated his thumb from the spread of his palm up to the juncture of his wrist, twisting the tip of the knife to dig at the flesh beneath his hand.

"Dean."

He breathed through the word, letting it thump against his eardrums and drown out the pressure of his blood flowing through his veins. They were _his_ veins - at least, for a little while longer.

And to think, he could have ended this the second he found out he could say _'yes'_. Such a simple word - but so complex.

Good thing he was the beauty and not the brains of this outfit. Well, what _had_ been an outfit.

He wondered if beauty could stand alone.

Sam had proven that brains could.

Dead weight.

_Slice_.

"Dean...what are you doing." Not a question. A command - damned sick of those.

DeanDeanDean - MarshaMarshaMarsha.

"What does it look like?" He tried to snap back, fire off with a hidden 'fuck you' behind the words, but they just dribbled over his lips like they were as tired as he was.

"Dean."

Team Free Will. What a fucking joke.

He would have cried if his heart wasn't so cold. He would have screamed if his soul wasn't so raw from the weight of all the screams before it. He would have begged forgiveness if there was any to be had.

Suicide within a suicide. Who ever knew he could be so abstract and non-linear?

Was _that_ a joke?

He'd have to ask Sam.

Sam would know what his brain meant.

He curled his fist, feeling the skin pop apart under the pressure of his own insides, forcing what was suppose to remain inside to the surface, the drip-trickle more of a tapping-flow.

'_You've got a lot to learn, boy -_'

_Teach me how to_ feel _again._

"I'm saying yes."

A pin could have dropped.

All the air sucked out of the vehicle and he waited for the shiver-rasp of departing wings.

Welcomed them.

So he could have his suicide within a suicide.

"I see."

Dean closed his eyes, only aware of having done so when he could no longer see the redredred against the startling white that was his own skin. It was beautiful. It was horrifying.

It was _perfect_.

'_Why didn't you just leave me there, then..._'

_It's blame_ now_, isn't it?_

Inside his eyelids the colors were blackblack with streaks of blue-green light.

"When are you going to tell Sam?"

_I'm not..._

He better have left that damned amulet in the trash. He was too good for Dean Winchester's brand of love. All it brought was pain the end - he deserved so much better than he had ever got.

_Slice_.

Maybe he'd start on his face next. Slow, deep strokes just-so under the eyes - it would make a statement, that's for sure.

He curled his fist tighter, ragged nails biting into the cut on his palms, lower lip disintegrating under his teeth.

Hmmm, it did taste sweeter in the cold. Chalk that 'need-to-know' off the list of things to ask Sam.

He laughed jaggedly, remembering that awful day (was it a month ago?) where he begged for aid in a rotting junkyard, for succor under the bloated, uncaring sky - that fateful _'yes'_ poised on the tip of his tongue, like a vile prayer. The taste of it rolling in his mouth as he wept bitter non-tears to the blank face of the Universe.

If only he had known how blank.

How much pain he could have saved himself from. How much pain he could have saved _them_ from - if that word had leaped faster than his own personal, bedraggled and naive angel. Castiel hot on the heels of the the air encompassing the _'yes'_ - not knowing how badly (even after all that learning over the past two years) Dean could lose. How he would break him and bleed him as surely as if he had placed him on the Rack.

It was slow, agonizing -

_but it gets the job done._

"Dean."

"Don't you ever get tired of saying that?" Speaking into the gushing well of his fist, not sure if he was going to be sick, or if he was going to laugh as his own blood pumped sluggish and slow over the chapped rub of his lips.

"Why are you harming yourself?"

"My ticket came up - I was next in line. It's only fair,' he quipped, his mind spiraling away with the blood on his wrist, across his jeans, soaking into Dad's jacket. It wasn't his - the blood or the jacket. Actually nothing was his, it was all slated for someone else.

Talk about not mattering.

He only mattered to two people (three maybe, if you counted Bobby, but that was a real big If nowadays) - and look where it got them.

_"What are you doing? Dean - you can't -"_

_"I'm sorry, Cas...I'm so tired and I just - I won't do this to him anymore."_

_"This isn't the way!_ Please_, Dean..."_

_**Please**_.

But he didn't matter now. He never mattered to himself - and now he only mattered to one being. And that creature would take him away on a whirlwind-

_"It's like being chained to a comet..."_

- and leave him as less than the nothing he had become.

He would beg for that.

He pursed his lips against the chilled stretch of his wrist, the pump of his blood hot within and lukewarm as it tippled out.

He would _beg_.

"No."

"No, what?" Lips cold against the warmth of his blood.

"No, I never get tired of saying it."

"Awww, that's sweet, Cas. You gonna write me a poem, now?" Sarcasm falling short between them, like round stones on a pond's surface, the ripples carrying him away from what was real.

Weary of this conversation in a circle.

"If that is what it takes."

Dean let that wash over him, eyes sliding open to catch the movement of Sam's shadow behind the curtains, restless, caged.

Sam's shadow without, watching Sam's shadow within.

Interesting concept.

Maybe _he_ should write the poem.

He closed his eyes again, blocking the sight, blocking out that last thought.

Sam's shadow.

"You should tell him."

'_And_ _I should tell_ you _to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut._'

"If that would make you feel better."

_Fuck_, he said that out loud.

"Why are you here, Castiel?" He noted the flinch at the angel's full name and felt an nasty tug of satisfaction at that. Seems he could still feel something after all - not that it was worth much.

Not that a vessel _needed_ to feel anything before he became a walking weapon for an arch-angel.

"You called."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing, letting the cooling tick of the engine speak for him, wash out the silent corners of the car.

But he hadn't.

"Two days ago, you called."

Had they been here that long?

How long had they stood this still?

"And you..."

"Decided to answer, yes."

"You shouldn't have come...Cas-"

"Dean."

He stilled, tongue snaking out to smear his life-force across his upper lip.

Sweeter.

"You can't stop me."

"I will if I have to."

He could feel the burn behind his eyes and blinked against it. Not now.

_Please, not now._

"Castiel -"

"Don't do that." Sharply, a rustle of feathers accompanying the harsh crackle of sound.

"I can't tell him...but, I can't walk away this time."

"Sacrifice has never boded well for you - or him, Dean."

"Why not? I just sacrificed his love for me, your trust, Bobby's legs - his _life_...there's nothing left to give, right?" His eyes flicked from his wrist to the window, where the shadow of his brother stilled as if listening.

Dean shuddered, mouth dry with the concept.

"Dean -"

"I have nothing left. I _am_ nothing more, in the end. This was what I was created for, right?"

Castiel went quiet, face turned away, the light of the moon washing out the lines on his face muting his thoughts.

"I won't tell him. I _can't_. He thinks...he thinks I _hate_ him, that I've given up on him - and the opposite is true. I could never...This _is_ for him. It's always for him - it's always _been_ him, you know?"

Fire streaked down his cheek and he was too weary to wipe it away, wondering where that fire was when he whisper-screamed for the end amidst the rusting hulks of ex-cars and rotting tires.

He wondered if that meant the end was really near - if these were the last minutes he'd breathe as Dean Winchester (vessel of Michael).

_He'd beg._

"Then why am I here?"

Dean had no answer and he couldn't think. He was cold, inside and outside and he just wanted to wipe the pain away in the alien storm of an arch-angel.

"_Why_, Dean."

"I don't -"

"You do. Don't do this to him. Don't do this to _me_."

_" - As long as you know where to apply the right pressure."_

_What can I say? I'm easy..._

Thirty years times two of pressure, topside, Downstairs - the mileage was the same.

"Cas -"

"Not when we've lost so much else."

_Standing so close, he could taste,_ smell _the whiskey reflected back at him._

_"Go back inside, see if Sam's okay -"_

_"Sam is fine, he's asleep. You on the other hand -"_

_"Go rescue someone else Castiel - you've got the wrong guy."_

_"You've said that before." _

_If Dean had leaned forward, even a fraction of an inch at that moment, their lips would have brushed - but all quips and cracks about personal space were gone. They had fallen into the black-hole that was his soul._

_"It still stands, doesn't it? Haven't you learned a fucking thing, you dumb sonuvabitch?"_

_"I learned that we need you - don't do this -"_

_Don't leave us this way._

_'We've already done this...'_

He would have closed his eyes again if they hadn't fallen shut already, lost in the haze of blood pattering down his arm, the smooth, flat hollow of sound that was Castiel's voice. It wrapped around him and brought pain searing back to life, his abused flesh protesting the chill of air across the folded edges of serrated skin.

_" -And deep down, you _know _you can't save your brother. They'd've been better off without you..."_

_I can barely save myself._

"Cas -"

"Please, Dean."

Then he was gone, air rushing to fill the space he had vacated, the emptiness deeper than it had been before he had appeared, the air heavy and thick with the reek of copper.

He could taste it behind his teeth, the cloying scent clogging his lungs as he struggled for breath, the pit-pat of bloody pattern and the creaking knock of the Impala soothing his chest back into normal rhythm.

He drifted, unsure for how long, but surely no longer than a few minutes, his thoughts jumbling in on themselves in a sticky weave of nonsense, his brain too tired to sort through the mire of memories old and new.

His masks were cracked, slipping - even as he clutched at them with blood soaked fingers.

Blood.

He blinked blearily, staring at the carnage he had created of his hands and wrists.

Shallow cuts, deeper meaning.

His carnage was everywhere.

He swallowed the sob that tried to choke him, relishing the sharp burn of it as it got caught in his chest, expanding with every breath.

_'I'm going to do this. For them...for_ all _of them.'_

_Liar._

He didn't look up, too afraid to even look for his brother anymore - he had hurt him so bad, destroyed what made him _Sam_.

All it took was a quick trip to Palo Alto.

The door creaked open, but he was too drained to jump, his eyes drawn to the maroon splashes across his jeans, the cuffs of his jacket. He barely registered the gentle 'Hey' as Sam leaned into his space, breathed in his corruption.

"Sam..."

"Shhh, Dean - hey....hey, let's get you inside, okay?"

"No, Sammy -"

"Dean - these look...well, not good -"

"I'm going to say 'yes', Sammy. I'm sorry."

Sam went still for a moment, then he went back to wrapping his hands, easing the knife out of his slick grip.

He listened to his brother fight for air, regret curdling his insides.

He had hurt him. _Again_.

He was so fucking good at that.

"So'm, I big brother...but - not tonight, _okay_?" A soft Sammy plea, eyes shining bright in the darkness.

The darkness was so big, crushing and complete - but Sam...

The light of his baby brother's eyes reflected in the dim glow of the amulet, the leather cord catching on Sam's collar before swinging free - a reminder of all that he had failed.

'_Why didn't you leave it be, Sammy..._'

He closed his eyes against it, too weak to struggle out of Sam's grasp and too weak to want to.

"_Sam_."

"Not tonight, Dean."

"Yeah...yeah, okay." He breathed.

He let Sam haul him out of the Impala, listening to the clink of keys as Sam removed them from the ignition, eyes closed to the blackness without, drowning in the blackness within redblackred and pulsing with pain.

He let Sam guide him back inside, hushed nonsense falling from his lips that soothed and seared all at once. He moved until he collapsed across a bed, too afraid to open his eyes and see the promise and sorrow that Sam wore around his neck - his brother's presence a warm, hovering comfort.

"Sam...Sammy?"

"I know, Dean," Sam whispered beside him, double checking the bandages with gentle, quiet efficiency.

"I'm sorry, too."

_**~FIN~**_


End file.
